The Correction (Part II) — Episode 13

36 / Gas Attack

Dustin, feeling out of place amid the orderly hum of busyness in the Pentagon, walked carefully to Melanie’s third-floor office. So far, his stolen keycard had worked on all of the entrances he had come to. The door to the Secretary’s office was open, however.

He walked in, hoping to find Melanie. Instead, he found a man seated behind a desk, hanging up the phone.

“Can I help you, sir?”

“Yes.” Dustin eyed the man’s nametag. “Mr. Travis, I need to speak with Mel — Secretary Dunn.”

Travis squinted at his computer screen. “She doesn’t have any meetings scheduled for today. And, uh, you are…?”

“I’m, uh…” Dustin shrugged his shoulders, trying to steal a glance at the ID card clipped to his suit pocket. If there was a name on it, he couldn’t read it. “No one. Just a friend.”

“How did you get in here?” Travis said, slowly slipping one hand over the phone’s handset.

“Through the door, which was open, by the way.”

Travis slipped his other hand under the desk. Dustin presumed he had a gun down there. “How did you get in this building.”

“I used my keycard, like everybody else,” Dustin said.

“Let me see it.”

Dustin fumbled in his pockets, pretending to look for the card. At the same time, Travis picked up the phone.

Dustin clambered up onto the desk, grabbing Travis’ hand, and forcing the handset back down onto the receiver. Holding Travis’ hand down, Dustin climbed down behind the desk and shoved Travis’ wheeled chair against its edge. The receptionist grunted as his other arm, the one reaching for the handgun, was cinched against the wood.

“Listen,” Dustin whispered in his ear, fully aware that the door was still open. “I don’t mean any harm. I just need to know where Melanie is so I can talk to her.”

“Who are you? Her boyfriend?” Travis said, twisting around in his seat to relieve the pressure on his arm.

Dustin shoved Travis’ head against the keyboard. “Answer the question.”

“I don’t know. She hasn’t been here in three days. She’s been skipping the Joint Chiefs meetings. Nobody knows what’s going on with her.”

“Hmm.” Dustin eased up on the man’s head. As soon as he did so, the lights in the room flickered off and back on. A high-pitched alarm pealed through the building.

Dustin slammed Travis’ head back on the desk. “What did you do?”

“I didn’t do anything. That’s the evacuation alarm.”

“Evacuation for what?”

“Oh, I don’t know. You tell me,” Travis said. “Maybe a security breach or unauthorized personnel break-in.”

“Wouldn’t they lock down for that sort of thing?” Dustin eased up on the man’s head.

Travis shrugged, tilting his head from one side to the other, stretching the muscles in his neck. “Maybe.”

Through the open door, they could hear the hallway filling with footsteps and noise as a stream of people rushed past the entrance. Red light pulsed rhythmically, casting the crowd in a feverish glow.

“I guess we better get going,” Dustin said. “But no tricky business.” He reached under the desk and snatched the handgun from Travis’ fingers.

As they joined the flow of people in the hall, three men in hazmat suits rushed past going in the opposite direction. They were followed by half a dozen men in full tactical gear and gas masks. One held a battering ram, clearing people out of the way as he went.

Travis grabbed one of the soldiers by the arm. “What is going on?”

“Gas leak or something in the Joint Chiefs conference room,” the soldier said.

“They were in session. Did they get out?”

The soldier shook his head. “Door’s locked from the inside.” He ran off after his team.

Travis rushed back into his office and opened a sliding door that hid a recess in the wall.

“What are you doing?” Dustin said.

Travis threw a gas mask over his shoulder. Dustin caught it. Travis came out of the little closet putting his own on.

“We’re supposed to be getting out of here,” Dustin said.

“Then get out.” Travis pushed his way into the flow of people heading for the exit.

Dustin hesitated, then put on his own mask and followed him.

He didn’t go far before he was walking through a cloud of gas. Up ahead he could hear the battering ram banging away against wood. People brushed past him in the mist, covering their mouths and noses with hands and handkerchiefs, coughing and sputtering.

Dustin stopped behind the cluster of hazmats and soldiers in front of the Joint Chiefs conference room. Another crash of the battering ram resounded against the door. The lock broke loose and the doors swung apart. An elderly man in a military dress uniform collapsed onto the floor of the hall, one arm extended, the other at his own throat as though gasping for breath.

His eyes were rolled back in death.

37 / But What Does It Say?

“Talking about getting out of here is one thing,” Templeton said as he munched on a salad. “Actually doing it is another.” He swung his fork around, motioning toward the guards standing at both entrances to the cafeteria.

“Yeah, it’s like we got put in prison but nobody’s admitting it,” Nehemiah said. He had casually mentioned to Special Director Forge that he had kids expecting him back soon. And she had informed him, just as casually, that no one was allowed to leave until given approval by her superiors. Nehemiah decided not to press the issue, seeing that he may need to use that angle more urgently later.

Still, after a day of confinement, they were no closer to coming up with a plan for moving The Correction back into hiding. They had read the document, and Ginny was hard at work putting together a schema whereby it could be applied to twenty-first century America. Ideally, it would have to be invoked by Congress, but such possible action was in the distant future.

“I still think our best bet is to create a replica and take the real one with us whenever we are allowed to leave, “ Templeton said. “Simple. And your sister won’t suspect a thing.”

“We don’t have the tools to make a replica,” Nehemiah said “And even if we did, it’s pointless. Nobody has seen the real one for over two hundred years. A fake would be just as effective.”

“Okay. We should just burn the whole thing and be done with it,” Templeton said. He stabbed a cherry tomato in frustration.

“Then we’d have to get everyone who wants it to believe it’s actually gone,” Nehemiah said. “Whatever we do, it has to be public. That’s the only way: we blow it out of the water, and then we put it to rest.”

“So, we’re still between the devil and the black plague,” Templeton said.

The doors to the cafeteria swung open and Saundra came rushing in, carrying one of the government-issued tablets from the lab. “Guys, you’re not going to believe this,” she said.

“Will we?” Templeton asked.

Saundra set the tablet down on the table. A live Fox News feed was playing. HISTORIANS UNCOVER DOCUMENT TO ‘RESET’ AMERICA, the headline read.

“What historians?” Templeton said.

A reporter was speaking. “An unpublished book manuscript by slain Boston University professor Henry McAllen claims evidence of a document dating back to the signing of the Constitution that could, quote, ‘reset America.’ Professor McAllen was in the middle of a collaboration with Hancock Press editor Saundra Boone which would have unveiled his discoveries this October.”

Nehemiah and Templeton looked at Saundra. “I didn’t give them anything,” she said.

The reporter continued with information they already knew. “The professor met with an untimely death under still-unclear circumstances. But the document he believed exists could very well abolish our democratic form of government.”

Templeton threw up his hands. “That’s not what it says!”

“It doesn’t matter what it says,” a voice said from the cafeteria entrance. It was Melanie. Saundra, Templeton, and Nehemiah exchanged glances as they looked up. “It matters what people think it says,” she concluded.

“Did you leak this?” Nehemiah asked.

“No,” Melanie said, but she hesitated just long enough for Nehemiah to suspect she was lying. “Either way, Ginny just informed me she has finished what I hear you’re calling ‘the schema.’ So, you’re all free to go.”

“Yeah, good,” Templeton said, getting up from the table.

“We are?” Nehemiah said carefully.

“Yeah,” Melanie nodded, but then sighed and reached for the phone clipped to her belt. She turned away from the table as she answered. “What?…No, I’m fine. I’m in Bethesda…What?…I’ll be there.” She cursed under her breath as she flipped the phone shut, turned, and marched out of the cafeteria, snapping her fingers at the guards who startled and then marched out after her.

“What now?” Templeton said.

“Guys, look,” Saundra said, pointing at the tablet. Fox News was playing live aerial video from the Pentagon. A stream of people were hustling out of multiple entrances. PENTAGON BEING EVACUATED, the headline read.

“What now?” Templeton said.

Before anyone could answer, the lights in the cafeteria went out. The tablet screen flickered and went black. Nehemiah looked to the cafeteria entrance, but no lights shined from the hall.

“Now what?” Templeton muttered into the blackness.

38 / Blackout

Two hundred and fifty miles above the Earth, Sally Cromwell stared down at the planet she called home from her seat in the International Space Station. Fifteen times a day, her satellite habitat cycled around the tiny ball of blue and green. It never ceased to amaze her how small the Earth seemed from where she was. Up here, the wars and conflicts of Earth seemed so insignificant. In all the vastness of space, she wondered why God would place all known living things in such a fragile position. One ill-timed meteor (it wouldn’t even have to be that big) — and bam! — all of life wiped out. At least that’s what scientists said happened to the dinosaurs millions of years ago.

Sally had two more months to ponder such questions in the quietness and peace of space. Two months until she would return to her home in Illinois and reunite with her husband, Liam, and her two children, Jonas and Chris.

She leaned forward in her seat and peered at the picture of her boys taped to the control panel. It was the only bare spot on a dashboard filled with monitors of earth and other scientific indicators. The spot was well-worn with sticky residue from the dozens of other astronauts who had taped photos of their loved ones there.

Something on one of the monitors — the one which displayed a live feed of the Western Hemisphere, which was currently in shadow because it was night there — caught her attention. The screen showed the land as black, the seas as gray, and population centers with flickering gradations of gold and white light clusters. Only some of the gold and white lights seemed to be going out in the middle of the United States — right over her home state of Illinois. “Agis, look,” Sally said to her co-astronaut, as she moved the controls to zoom in on America. She pointed at the black hole near the Great Lakes, bereft of light. “What’s happening?”

“Looks like a blackout,” Agis said.

“There’s no storms or anything,” Sally said, motioning toward the weather monitor. Except for the usual cloud cover, there was nothing out of the ordinary.

“It’s getting bigger,” Agis said. “We should call headquarters.” He moved back to his seat and put on a pair of headphones. “This is Alpha Station, come in.”

“Oh, my goodness. This is not just a blackout.” Sally watched as the circle of blackness slowly grew. Illinois was completely in the dark. The circle expanded, engulfing the surrounding states, lights winking out with intention. The tsunami of night didn’t stop until blackness covered half of the country — from Virginia in the east to Kansas in the west, from Michigan in the north to Alabama in the south. Only the further reaches of New England and Florida were spared.

…

Panic and confusion reigned in America.

There was no light, no electricity. Phones weren’t calling, cars weren’t driving.

Criminals took advantage of the catastrophe and robbed their neighbors. Some killed. Some raped. Some attacked.

Preppers and doomsday enthusiasts, feeling gleefully vindicated, hurried into their underground bunkers. It was hard to keep from gloating over those who had not been ready.

In half of America, people looked to the sky thinking the Apocalypse had finally come.

With communication lines crippled, the media and authorities in the West struggled to find out what was going on.

…

In the middle of an Oklahoma wheat field, the earth opened up, and a man with long white hair stuck his head out of the ground. As far as his grey eyes could see, there was no light. Only darkness.

“Darkness is good,” the man said.